The Web has made it easier than ever for new businesses to get started. No longer do companies need to establish a physical location for their business. Today, many companies operate solely online and their website is their “place of business”.
If you’ve never been involved in a new website project, one of the first questions you are likely to ask is “How much does a website cost?” Unfortunately, this question is impossible to answer unless you get much more specific.
Website pricing is based on a number of factors, including the features that will need to be included in that site. It’s like asking the questions, “How much does a car cost?” Well, that depends on the car, including the make and model, the age of the car, all the amenities it includes and more. Unless you flesh out the details of that car, no one can answer this “how much does it cost” question, just like no one can give you a definitive website cost unless they understand the scope of work and range of features it will include.
So as you get started with a website, it is helpful to price out different options so that you can plan and budget effectively for the site you actually need to run a successful business.Here is a common scenario for small business owners (please remember that all prices in this article are estimates – every company charges differently for their services, so use this as a guide only):
- I’ve got a great idea for a website, and the perfect domain name for it is available! ($10-$30 for domain registration)
- I’ll get a decent web hosting package, with a good price. ($150-$300 for two years of hosting, pre-paid)
- I’m going to use WordPress, and this theme is perfect. ($40)
At first glance this looks great, with a as little as $200 to start a business, and you don’t even need a designer!
For some businesses, this may be fine to get started, but how long will this starter website last you? Once you get past the initial stages of the business, however, you will likely notice that the “theme” you selected isn’t doing all that you want it to or that you just need more out of your website. Yes, you got up and running quickly and cheaply, but you would have been better served working with a professional team to get started with a site that would have some longevity to it! Whether you go down that road from the start (which is recommended) or decide to upgrade your starter site, the next step is engaging with a professional team to create you a new site and add the features you need.
WHAT TO PAY FOR
The first thing you need to know when trying to budget web design costs is what you’re going to need. There are a number of things to consider that can cost you money include:
- Is this a new site or a redesign?
- Do you need blog or content management functionality?
- Do you have graphics for the site? Or are you using a template? Or do you need custom images created?
- How are you planning on servicing mobile customers?
- Do you need multimedia (video, etc.) on the site?
- How much content do you have, and how much do you need created?
- Do you need other special features like social media, SEO, Ecommerce, or something else?
- Who will maintain the site?
Below I will go into detail about all of these things, and help you get a general idea of how much you should budget for them. The prices I list are based on my experience; prices may be higher or lower in your area. Be sure to shop around and request proposals from any designer or firm you’re thinking of hiring.
NEW SITES OFTEN COST MORE THAN REDESIGNS
When you’re starting from scratch, so is the web designer. They have no previously created assets to work from, or to review with you in order to get an idea of what you already love or hate.
The advantage to starting from scratch is that you can work more closely with the designer to get exactly you want within your budget. Design work varies greatly based on who you work with, but a fresh new design is likely to run you anywhere from $500 to thousands of dollars depending on the number of options you are presented initially, the number of revision rounds, and the hourly cost of the design team you engage with.
BLOGS AND CONTENT MANAGEMENT TOOLS
If you’re already running a WordPress site then you have the advantage of already having a form of content management system (CMS for short) on your site. Tools like WordPress, ExpressionEngine, Joomla! and Drupal have their own challenges, and integrating a site using them requires more time than building a site from scratch with just HTML and CSS. Decide if you need these tools by reading this article: Dreamweaver vs. Drupal vs. WordPress – Which is Best to Use.
Also, don’t assume that if you already have a WordPress theme that working off of it should be cheaper. Many themes are sold as-is, and designers are not licensed to change them. Often, the cost of purchasing a theme that can be modified is as expensive as just building a new theme from scratch.
Your budget should include another $200 if you want a blog or CMS. Include this in your budget even if you already have the system running. If you don’t have it running, you should plan to include another $200 to get it installed and running.
GRAPHICS
Graphics are tricky because they can be difficult to create, and purchasing stock images for the site can be expensive. You don’t want to skimp on this area of your site, however; poor graphics planning can cause you grief down the road if you’re not careful.
If you supply all of the images, you will still need to budget some funds to get those images integrated into the new design (budget at least $250). Don’t assume that if you’ve already got a template you want to use that you won’t need any images re-done. Customizing templates can take time, and you want to be sure that the designer has the rights to customize the images in the template. If this is the route you go, you should budget $500.
If you’re looking for the design firm to create an entirely new design with images for you, either in a template or not, you should budget at least $1200.
But that’s not all there is regarding images. You will probably also need icons and buttons created to go with your design.
Budget $350 for them. And any other custom images you need you should budget another $450. The more images that you need, the more money you should budget.
You should always make sure that your designer uses licensed stock images (learn more about where to find stock photos) or creates brand new graphics for your site. Be sure to get the license information in writing for any images you will use on your site. Otherwise, you could be looking at a several thousand dollar bill from a stock photo company down the road. Companies like Getty Images are very serious about their licenses, and they won’t hesitate to bill your site even if you’ve only used one of their images without a license.
If your designer is going to add stock photos, budget at least $20-$100 per photo—and remember that this could be an annual fee.
MOBILE DESIGNS
Mobile visitors may account for more than half of your site’s traffic, which means your site needs to work well on all devices!
The best designs are responsive to the device viewing the page, but creating that type of design will cost more than a simple site for a desktop web browser. This is likely part of the cost of the site’s design and development already, but if you are trying to “tack on” mobile friendliness to a site, it could cost you $3000 or more to do so, depending on the site itself.
MULTIMEDIA
Video is easy to integrate into a site with the use of resources like YouTube or Vimeo. Uploading those videos to those platforms, you can then embed the videos in your site. Of course, you must budget to create the videos in the first place. Depending on your team and the level of professionalism in the video, this could be anywhere from $250 to $2000 or more per video.
If you cannot use YouTube for your video, you will also need to have a custom solution to deliver that content, which could be thousands more in development costs.
CONTENT CREATION AND ADDITION
The cheapest way to go is to create all of the content and add it into the site yourself. Most designers have no problem delivering a design template that you populate for no additional cost. But if you want the design firm to add the content you’ve already got into the site, you should budget around $150 per page of typed content (more if they have to type it in) and $300 per page if you want them to create the content for you as well.
SPECIAL FEATURES ALWAYS COST EXTRA
With the above elements, you will have a website that most people would agree is sufficient, but there are a lot of extra features that many designers can provide that will up the price, but can also improve your business:
- Site membership and registration $750
- Forums or chat rooms $350
- News feeds of both your content (outgoing) and adding content to the site (incoming)Â $400
- Contact forms and surveys $350
- Email addresses for the domain and auto-responders $300
- Newsletters $500
- Advertising integration (such as with AdSense)Â $250
- Photo gallery $250
- Ecommerce: shopping carts, catalogs, payment processing $1500–$5000 or more
- Metrics: custom reports, Google analytics, etc. $500–$2000
- SEO: page optimization, submission to search engines, etc. $500–$5000
- Social media: Twitter, FaceBook, etc. $500–$3000
AND DON’T FORGET MAINTENANCE
Maintenance is something that most businesses forget to budget, or if they dismiss it as something they’ll do themselves. However, the first time you delete your entire home page by mistake and lose eight hours of sales trying to get it back up and running, you’ll wish you’d spent the extra money on a maintenance contract to work with the experts!
Maintenance contracts vary greatly depending upon what you expect from the firm. You should budget a minimum of $200 per month to have a designer on call if you have a problem that you can’t fix (and that is a very cheap contract indeed – many contracts will be much more than that depending on your needs). If you expect them to do additional work such as creating new images, adding new content, maintaining social media or newsletters, and other tasks on an ongoing basis, expect the price to go up.
Many designers dislike doing site maintenance, so it can sometimes be hard to find a firm that will do it for you.
So, How Much Does it All Cost?
| Features | Basic Site | Some Extras | Full Site |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base site costs | $500 | $500 | $750 |
| Content Management or Blog | $200 | $200 | $750 |
| Basic graphics | $250 | $500 | $1200 |
| Additional graphics | $300 | $300 | $500 |
| Total: | $1250 | $1500 | $3200 |
Adding in addtional features increases the price.
| Features | Basic Site (1 page) | Some Extras | Full Site |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mobile | $750 | $900 (one extra size) | $1050 (two extra sizes) |
| Multimedia | $750 | $750 | $1500 |
| Content | $300 (2 extra pages) | $750 (5 extra pages) | $1500 (creating 5 pages including content) |
| Extras | $250 (photo gallery) | $500 (photo gallery and ads) | $5000 (or more) |
| Maintenance | $100 per month | $250 per month | $500 per month |
| Total: | $2050 + $100 per month | $2900 + $250 per month | $9500 + $500 per month |
So, for a simple site you can spend as little as $1250, or as much as $20,000 or more for a feature-rich website experience.
Your budget should be based on what your business needs. Remember that all of these prices are estimates, especially on the low end. Web design prices fluctuate all the time. You may spend more or less depending on the size and scope of the design firm you hire, or if you decide to seek offshore development and design work.
You should treat these numbers as a starting point in your negotiations with your Web designer.
Original article by Jennifer Krynin. Edited by Jeremy Girard on 6/6/17